It’s
great to see Kristen Stewart developing into an exciting actress. Working with Olivier Assayas again after Clouds of Sils Maria(2014), which she
shared screen time with veteran Juliette Binoche, Stewart now headlines the
director’s latest, a beguiling film that refuses to be pigeonholed into any
genre or style, though it comes closest to being seen as a ‘haunted house' type
movie.

Even
that label can’t even begin to describe the enigmatic quality that Assayas has
brought to the table, delivering one of the better films of his oeuvre. That being said, Personal Shopper will frustrate viewers looking for a standard
emotional payoff, or the cliché scares associated with the genre. How well you resonate with the picture is how
well you let yourself loose in Assayas’ world of psychological deception.

Opening
with Stewart’s character, Maureen, who stays alone in a large house in the
middle of the night—thus playing with the conventions set forth by horror
tropes, Personal Shopper is a ‘ghost
story’ that questions the existence of the afterlife, exploring ideas
associated with spiritualism and communication with the dead.

Maureen’s
twin brother has recently died, and we learn that he was a serious medium in
tune with the mysteries of the other world.
Much of the horror elements—which aren’t outright frightening, but more
of Assayas playing with the creative possibilities of camerawork, music and
sound design to create an atmosphere of tension and fear—are tempered by
another side to Maureen’s life: she’s a freelance personal shopper for an egocentric
fashion celebrity.

Maureen’s
desire to taste the forbidden fruit—to try on her employer’s uber-expensive
clothes and shoes (and be someone
else)—is paralleled with her desire to seek emotional closure with her deceased
sibling. The dialectics of fear and
desire, tension and sensuality are most pronounced in a scene where Stewart
goes nude in the walk-in wardrobe of her boss’ house, in search of material and
psychological fulfilment, and to an extent, a kind of eroticism that seems to
have eluded her in her period of grief.

Assayas
has called Personal Shopper a
companion piece to Clouds of Sils Maria in
that Stewart’s character operates on the fringes of incredible wealth and fame
in both films. Of course, with a
performance this good, she is now well away from the fringes of mediocrity.

Verdict: Olivier Assayas' beguiling take on the ‘ghost story',
made with a blend of sensuality and tension, and backed by a stirring turn by
Kristen Stewart.